Kosovo and the Current Myth of Information Superiority

TIMOTHY L. THOMAS

The Pentagon's March 1999 brochure on information
operations begins with a few words from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, General Henry H. Shelton. He notes that "information operations
and information superiority are at the core of military innovation and
our vision for the future of joint warfare. . . . The capability to penetrate,
manipulate, and deny an adversary's battlespace awareness is of utmost
importance."[1] The Pentagon's brochure adds that "the chief
concern of information superiority is the human user of information. Without
knowing when, where, why, with what, and how to act, warfighters cannot
perform mission-essential tasks efficiently and effectively."[2]

Kosovo, unfortunately, exposed problems with this concept. First, in
spite of NATO's near total information superiority, its battlespace awareness
was manipulated by the Serbian armed forces more often than expected. When
human and software interpreters of intelligence information were fooled,
it resulted in munitions wasted on fake or incorrect targets and in bad
assessments of the actual situation on the ground. It also affected both
mission-essential tasks and battle damage assessments. In the latter case,
it meant different estimates by NATO and Pentagon officials of the number
of armored vehicles destroyed.

Second, testimony indicates that both NATO planners and the human users
of information were not adequately prepared to conduct information operations.
For example, in their lessons-learned testimony before the Senate Armed
Services Committee on 14 October 1999, Secretary of Defense William Cohen
and General Shelton noted that "the pool of personnel available to
perform certain key functions, such as language translation, targeting,
and intelligence analysis, was limited" and that "the conduct
of an integrated information operations campaign was delayed by the lack
of both advance planning and strategic guidance defining key objectives."[3]
But planning had started in earnest in the summer of 1998, Cohen and Shelton
testified, some nine months before the start of the conflict on 24 March
1999. Did initial planning not include information operations?

Finally, General Wesley K. Clark, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, reportedly
stunned a recent session of the Senate Armed Services Committee when he
called for a complete rethink of Western strategy and questioned the need
for the aerial assault on Serbia. General Clark noted that NATO could have
used legal means to block the Danube and the Adriatic ports, and could
have used "methods to isolate Milosevic and his political parties
electronically."[4] If implemented and augmented with other measures,
Clark added, the military instrument might have never been used.[5]
These and other issues demonstrate that, for the present anyway, information
superiority is a goal to be achieved and not a given that US forces can
assume as their birth right.

This article will look at the conflict between NATO and Yugoslavia not
from the standpoint of the intent or success of the air campaign (although
these issues will be touched upon) but rather through the prism of information
superiority. Information superiority allowed NATO to know almost everything
about the battlefield, but NATO analysts didn't always understand everything
they thought they knew.

What Is Information Superiority?

Information superiority, the cornerstone of Force XXI, is a capability
(not a proven condition) that the US armed forces are trying to develop.
Once the concept becomes robust it will help to reduce uncertainty, provide
a more complete intelligence picture of the battlefield, and assist precision-guided
missiles in obtaining and destroying targets. Much of this capability was
on display in the recent conflict in Kosovo.

Information superiority is defined by US Joint Publication 3-13 as "the
capability to collect, process, and disseminate an uninterrupted flow of
information while exploiting or denying an adversary's ability to do the
same."[6] According to this definition, NATO's forces entered the
Kosovo conflict with near total information superiority. It appeared that
NATO was able to collect, process, and disseminate military information
at will while denying the Serbs the same capability. However, NATO forces
did encounter intelligence and information problems, including instances
of the Serbs using nontechnical methods to manipulate NATO analysts' perceptions,
resulting in misinterpreted information. Joint Publication 2-01 warns about
this phenomenon in a discussion of the "intelligence cycle."
The publication notes, "Time constraints and the demands of modern
battle tend to make the processing and production phases indistinguishable."[7]
This in turn limits "evaluating, analyzing, and interpreting information
from single or multiple sources into a finished intelligence product."[8]

In addition, Serbian civilian and military personnel were able to use
civilian telephone and radio links to pass military information. Such nontechnical
offsets either thwarted information collection or corrupted NATO information
superiority. That is, the human link in the NATO analytic process was less
successful in interpreting information, reducing uncertainty, and providing
a clear intelligence picture of the battlefield than expected. For example:

. Some six months after the conflict, NATO and
the Pentagon still did not know how many tanks and armored personnel carriers
they destroyed, in spite of supposed total information superiority during
the conflict, the ability to monitor Serb forces leaving the area after
the conflict, and the presence of their own people on the ground to inspect
targets that were hit.

. NATO pilots were forced to drop millions of dollars
of ordnance in the Adriatic and on open countryside because they could
not find their targets or engage them properly due to bad weather and the
aerial rules of engagement (ROE) imposed by politicians. (The planes could
not land with the unexpended ordnance on board.) Since the ROE were imposed
by politicians, this means that politicians affected information superiority,
too.

. NATO after-action reports stress that Milosevic
may have intercepted NATO communications and warned targets that they were
about to be hit. The testimony of Secretary Cohen and General Shelton supports
this thesis. They indicated that NATO lacked interoperable secure communications,
forcing reliance on nonsecure methods that compromised operational security.[9]
This speaks poorly about the progress of communications technology, compatibility,
and information superiority in NATO after 50 years of practice (and in
this case with no enemy radio-electronic opposition of any consequence).

. NATO had almost perfect intelligence about the
intentions, goals, and attitudes of President Milosevic through a multitude
of personal discussions with him over the previous four years by representatives
from scores of nations (and possibly from communications intercepts), yet
could not get him to the negotiating table, foresee his ruthless ethnic
cleansing campaign in time to stop him, or predict his asymmetric responses
to NATO technological and bombing prowess.

Further, NATO did not process information quickly enough to enable aircraft
to strike mobile targets. This was because of the reaction time required
to pass data from EC-130 (airborne command, control, and communications)
aircraft to NATO's Combined Air Operations Center at Vicenze, Italy, and
then on to strike assets. Total information superiority did not prevent
the most technologically advanced air armada in the world from mistakenly
striking trains and convoys, schools and hospitals, and Bulgaria with missiles.
Yes Bulgaria, the wrong country, although that incident was the result
of a weapon system malfunction, not an error in the application of information.

Two important qualifiers are missing, but implied, in the Joint Publication
3-13 definition of information superiority: "accurate" and "timely."
Information superiority requires the "accurate and timely" collection,
processing, and dissemination of information. Battle damage assessments
on armored vehicles indicate that the accuracy of hits on mobile targets,
for example, was much lower than originally stated. Such inaccurate information
can lead to wrong conclusions and assumptions. For example, NATO claims
that 99.6 percent of the bombs dropped hit the intended target are difficult
to fathom.[10] Undoubtedly the percentage differed for stationary and for
mobile targets. And does this figure reflect that some bombs hit fake targets,
and that many bombs had to be jettisoned into the Adriatic due to bad weather
or because a target had moved? Only after illuminating the data with such
criteria can a real assessment of accuracy be made. A lower figure--perhaps
80 percent--might be a more realistic assessment but still a perfectly
acceptable measure of success.

Strikes on fake targets indicate that the Serbs let NATO daytime reconnaissance
flights see real targets and then replaced them at night, or that US target
analysts misinterpreted the information furnished them. Processing information
is one thing, interpreting it is an art. Serbian civil and military officials
improvised and developed low-tech offsets that limited the effectiveness
of NATO's information superiority and misled NATO collection assets. Put
another way, they fooled our information interpreters. Their offsets included
deception, disinformation, camouflage, the clever use of radar, spies within
NATO, helicopter movements NATO couldn't detect, and the exploitation of
NATO's operational templating of information-dominance activities (e.g.,
satellites, reconnaissance flights). As Lieutenant General Michael C. Short,
NATO's air operations chief, noted, "NATO placed its own air crews
at increased risk by taking certain steps to reduce civilian casualties,
such as bombing bridges only on week nights between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.--a
regular schedule that made NATO planes more vulnerable to antiaircraft
fire."[11]

Additionally, Serbia exploited the strict rules of engagement to protect
or move certain target sets. This further limited the effectiveness of
NATO's information technology. For example, NATO aerial ROE stated that
pilots could fire only on visual recognition, diminishing the value of
targets obtained by other methods. Finally, political statements that no
ground campaign was planned allowed the Serbs to hang on longer against
an opponent with total information superiority and attempt to exploit any
cracks in NATO's solidarity. One can conclude there are ways to manipulate
total information superiority.

Digital interpreters of data differ from the old intelligence analysts
who worked with photos and captured documents to interpret data. The former
must be aware of and study nontechnical offsets in addition to technologically
produced intelligence, and constantly review the methods they use to interpret
data. There is much to learn from Kosovo about the current myth of information
superiority, particularly that simple human innovations can severely degrade
digital dominance, and that human interpretation of data is a science worth
reinvigorating.

NATO's Information Superiority

The conditions were right for NATO to achieve total information superiority.
There was virtually no air force flying against NATO's 37,000 sorties (Serbs
flew only some 10 air intercept or fast-mover missions). NATO faced antiquated,
minimal enemy air defense artillery assets developed in the 1950s through
the 1980s that couldn't reach above 15,000 feet. No real counter-radar
challenge was offered since the air defense assets that could reach higher
levels were not turned on. NATO possessed the ability to pinpoint targets
using Predator and Hunter unmanned drone aircraft as well as satellite
and JSTARS intelligence links, yet made mistakes. There was a huge assortment
of intelligence products on hand concerning Belgrade and Serbia based on
several recent field exercises. There were elements on the ground to assist
in the effort, including personnel from the Kosovo Liberation Army. There
was no Serb jamming of communication or radar assets. Total NATO information
superiority was at hand. Yet errors were made in the selection of buildings
to be hit, most notably the Chinese embassy.

In spite of this superiority, a ground operation was almost launched.
The Washington Post described top-secret talks among NATO countries'
defense ministers at the end of May to plan a ground invasion. That is,
flying with impunity, grounded only by bad weather, NATO mounted a 78-day
air campaign (Desert Storm's lasted 43 days) and this still wasn't enough.
NATO was forced to stand down a last-minute scramble to mount a ground
campaign. (Planning for such an operation had taken place much earlier.
The reference here is to moving forces into position to cross the Kosovo
border in an underdeveloped theater, where the force in place was attending
to the needs of thousands of refugees, and to conduct operations before
winter.) It took a combination of an underrated assist from President Martti
Ahtisaari of Finland and former Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin of Russia,
the threat of a ground operation, and the air campaign to actually achieve
a negotiated settlement and later a capitulation to stop the air war. General
Wesley Clark, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, noted that Milosevic probably
caved in simply because he ran out of options.[12]

The air campaign, however, was the signal event of NATO's strategy.
The pilots and support personnel should rightly receive nearly all the
credit for making Milosevic blink. On the other hand, what did the air
campaign eventually achieve? Achievements should be viewed in accordance
with both political and military measures. A logical political expectation
would be that the Milosevic government would sign Rambouillet Two or some
other agreement less acceptable to Yugoslavia, since Serbian reluctance
to sign this document was the motivation for going to war. But Rambouillet
Two was not signed and the Belgrade Agreement that was signed delivered
something far less. That is, the prosecution of the air campaign did not
lead to NATO getting what it originally wanted. The question must be asked,
was the air campaign unsuccessful in the political respect because NATO's
initial demands were too high?

On the other hand, military planners state that the intent of the air
campaign was to negate the effective use of Yugoslav forces in Kosovo and
ultimately eject those forces from Kosovo. This was accomplished by the
use of air power, and no one can dispute this. Simultaneously, however,
Yugoslav paramilitaries and police began their ethnic cleansing operation
which the air campaign could not target. The air campaign was unable to
target individual policemen or other ethnic cleansers unleashed by Milosevic.
Was a ground operation needed to prevent the ethnic cleansing? Did the
successes of the international negotiators and the threatened ground force
intervention at the time that Milosevic threw in the towel mean that the
air campaign "was successful because it failed"?[13] That is,
the air campaign was not able to deliver an end game by itself without
the combined threats of a ground attack and the negotiating prowess of
the Russian and Finnish participants.

There is much to ponder and learn from the conflict in Yugoslavia. However,
Kosovo should not be considered a typical future conflict on which to base
subsequent contingencies. NATO and US leaders cannot plan on always flying
without opposition (or having unimpeded communications). Kosovo and, to
a certain extent, Desert Storm were aberrations in that regard. Another
danger is the tendency of some officials to spout euphoria about the "matchless"
NATO force and its unrivaled capabilities. "Matchless" when pitted
against what--the air defense forces of Iraq and Yugoslavia? Neither NATO
nor the United States has fought a modern, up-to-date power. Finally, another
lesson to be learned is that even without information superiority, a thinking
opponent can take actions that must be countered. Clausewitz noted this
lesson in his own century.

Battle Damage Assessment: What Do We Believe?

One of the major indicators of the myth of information superiority is
the ongoing examination of battle damage assessment. This is particularly
the case with official figures offered by the NATO Supreme Allied Commander
and the Department of Defense versus those of foreign defense departments
and independent reporters.

The Views of General Wesley Clark, Supreme Allied Commander, NATO

It is important to note that this analysis is simply an attempt to express
the concern generated by sets of figures that do not correspond to one
another. It is not an attempt to cast doubt on General Wesley Clark, who
has received far less credit than he deserves for keeping the alliance
together during the conflict. General Clark does not count tanks; he relies
on figures provided by others. It is fair to examine the figures he is
being provided, however, and to consider how he chose to use them.

On 12 July, one month after the end of the bombing, the Navy Times
discussed General Clark's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Relying on information provided by his staff, Clark stated that reports
about NATO warplanes striking decoys and failing to destroy tanks and personnel
carriers was a concerted disinformation campaign. Rather, he chose to underscore
the virtual invulnerability of NATO aircraft and the fact that Kosovo set
a new standard for warfare. He did not mention that there was no air force
flying against NATO, nor that the 15,000-foot limitation was set to ensure
there would be no damage to NATO's "virtually invulnerable" fleet.
Battle damage assessment, according to Clark, included the destruction
of 110 Serb tanks, 210 armored personnel carriers, and 449 guns and mortars.
He also noted that NATO was aware the Serbs were using decoys and were
able to recognize them. Department of Defense estimates of battle damage
were slightly higher than Clark's estimates (120 tanks, 220 armored personnel
carriers, and 450 artillery pieces).[14]

Clark later offered a reason why the battle damage may not have been
as high as initially expected--there was a spy within NATO giving targets
away to Belgrade. The Pacific Stars and Stripes quotes Clark on
13 August as saying the leak "was as clear as the nose on your face."[15]
That is certainly one form of asymmetric offset to information superiority,
and again it involves the human dimension. Even with complete information
superiority, one can't destroy the target if the enemy knows an attack
is coming and simply moves it or replaces it with a dummy target. NATO
officials were reportedly tipped off that a spy might be among them by
the fact that certain targets appeared to be vacated after appearing on
target lists but before NATO planes attacked.

In September, a Pentagon review of the war was delayed by one month
in order to fill in gaps in the number of armored vehicles and artillery
batteries actually destroyed. One report noted that General Clark told
a Pentagon officer that analysts verified only some 70 percent of the reported
hits. Clark then ordered the US European Command to prepare a new estimate
as well.[16] In a later report, Clark lowered his battle damage assessment,
noting that in all likelihood only 93 tanks and 153 armored personnel carriers
were destroyed.[17] The difference--17 tanks and 57 armored personnel carriers--is
close to two reinforced infantry battalions. That obviously would be an
extremely significant difference to a ground commander preparing for an
attack.Accurate damage assessments are crucial to a ground commander's
maneuver requirements.

Even with total information superiority, it was not possible to verify
battle damage with any accuracy some two months after the conflict ended,
despite having NATO forces on the ground and overhead coverage of departing
Serb vehicles. Since DOD and NATO still have not produced a compatible
set of figures to this day, there clearly is a faulty methodology or other
problem here as well. All of these hits were cockpit recorded and many
were shown on TV. There should be near compatibility between NATO and Pentagon
findings in the age of information superiority.

The British Press and Other Reporters on Battle Damage Assessment

Independent accounts from reporters covering the battle for Kosovo offered
an entirely different set of battle damage statistics from those offered
by either General Clark or the Pentagon. Their perspective is interesting
for it is offered from firsthand, on-the-ground analysis, just like the
latter NATO and Pentagon estimates.

The first newspaper reports on battle damage appeared at the end of
June. Indications were that only 13 Serb tanks and fewer than 100 armored
personnel carriers had been destroyed. Reporters noted the ruins of many
different types of decoys hit by NATO forces (e.g., rusted tanks with broken
parts, wood or canvas mock-ups). Carlotta Gall of The New York Times,
a veteran war correspondent from the first Russian war in Chechnya, saw
little damage. Newsweek reporter Mark Dennis found only one destroyed
tank after driving around Kosovo for ten days. Did the Serbs manage to
extricate all of their destroyed vehicles during their publicly filmed
withdrawal, did they hide them, or did they really experience much less
damage than NATO sources declared?

In late July, Aviation Week and Space Technology reported that
NATO had dropped 3,000 precision-guided weapons that resulted in 500 hits
on decoys, but destroyed only 50 Yugoslav tanks. Deputy Defense Secretary
John Hamre also reported that all 30 (other sources use the figure 20)
incidents of collateral damage would be studied (the trains, convoys, schools,
hospitals, and Bulgarian strikes).[18] What types of bombs actually hit
the decoys is known only by Pentagon insiders, so they are the only ones
capable of calculating the amount of money wasted on these targets. This
is an important issue, however, because early in the war NATO and US stocks
of precision weaponry ran very low, a fact that undoubtedly was noted and
highlighted by other nations with hostile intent toward the alliance. They
received a yardstick measurement of how long an air campaign can proceed
using certain types of high-tech armaments against specific targets before
stocks run low.

U.S. News and World Report, in its 20 September 1999 edition,
stated that a NATO team visited 900 "aim points" targeted by
NATO in Kosovo and found only 26 tank and similar-looking self-propelled-artillery
carcasses. This would again throw NATO's revised number of 93 tanks out
the window. However, how many tank carcasses were in Serbia, where the
NATO team did not visit, is not known, making this figure less provocative
and contradictory than it originally appears. The article also reported
increased friction between General Clark and his NATO air operations chief,
Lieutenant General Michael Short, over target selection and strategy (mobile
targets such as tanks versus infrastructure, respectively). The article
concluded that it was not air power but Russia's withdrawal of support
for Serbia that probably brought an end to the air war in Kosovo. The article
noted that in future conflicts, the most merciful way to end them may be
to conduct them swiftly and violently instead of by the trial-and-error,
phased approach used in Kosovo.[19]

Finally, several British officers, both retired and serving, also noted
that damage was much less than originally stated. One newspaper report,
citing British Ministry of Defense sources, stated that the damage done
to tanks was perhaps even less than the lowest quoted figure of 13 tank
kills.[20] But the most damning comment could prove to be from an InternationalHerald Tribune article on 1 October. Written by Frederick Bonnart,
the editorial director of the independent but highly authoritative NATO's
Nations, the article discusses how NATO "propaganda" was
used against the West. He notes:

In democracies, it is the duty of the public services to present the
truth even in wartime, and particularly when they are in sole control of
the information. If it is deliberately designed to engender fear and hate,
then the correct term is propaganda.[21]

In particular, Bonnart believes the armored vehicle totals did not properly
represent the vehicles actually destroyed, and that NATO deliberately used
the West's reputation for truth and fairness to carry out a highly charged
information policy against the Serbs. This made NATO's information policy
rife with propaganda, Bonnart contends, and he points out that recommendations
are being prepared to create a future NATO crisis information organization
to keep this from happening again.[22] When did we ever think that a NATO-oriented
publication's editor would be publicly accusing SACEUR's organization of
propaganda and disinformation?

Assessing the Results of Information Superiority

One danger of the air campaign over Yugoslavia is overestimating NATO
and US capabilities. All of the systems did not function all of the time
with perfection. For example, some of the high-tech systems were unable
to operate under poor weather conditions, as underscored in the daily Pentagon
briefings during the campaign. Certainly it was an exaggeration to say:

A vast number of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems
allowed for the rapid collection and collating into a single system the
vital battlefield intelligence that we sent to our shooters. Taken together,
all these innovations allowed our pilots to hit any target, any time, day
or night, in any weather, accurate to within a few feet.[23]

Secretary of Defense William Cohen, in a November speech in California,
listed several extremely important qualifiers regarding capabilities. He
noted that even the most advanced technologies have limits and that a precision-guided
weapon can only hit the coordinates it is given. Moreover, "our vast
intelligence system can create such a haystack of data that finding the
one needle that will pinpoint a target in the right time frame is difficult,
indeed."[24]

Hitting the right target on time requires sorting out the right coordinates
from a pile of information (interpreted correctly) at the right time, a
degree of data management that is difficult to achieve. Yet that, most
believe, is just what information superiority was designed to do. It is
clear from the Secretary's comments that much work remains. His "technologies
have limits" qualifier requires our attention. This is perhaps a recognition
that our systems still cannot, as evidenced by Kosovo, determine if a target
is a fake, and this in an environment where we were not confronted by opposing
information technology systems to disrupt friendly systems. As a result,
NATO and the United States lost untold resources each time we expended
ordinance on impostor targets.

Does a count of destroyed tanks matter? When counts are off by such
a margin, they do. A comparison of these figures causes the average American
to shake his head in confusion and frustration. Worse yet, these figures
affect American lives. The interpretation of data by analysts at the lowest
level also directly affects the credibility of our leaders and commanders
who must stand before service members and the American public to relate
the data. The problem is analogous to that encountered with counting SCUD
missiles during Desert Storm. Coalition assets often hit gas or trailer
trucks instead of missile launch vehicles for the same reasons. We haven't
corrected this problem, and maybe it is simply beyond our ability to do
so with current technologies. But we must face up to our shortcomings if
we want to do better. Concern over battle damage assessment is not analogous
to the Vietnam era's "body count" fixation, as some try to imply.
Rather, the battle damage assessment debate is over just how much of our
battlespace awareness was manipulated, and that does matter.

Another problem with disputes over battle damage assessment in Kosovo
is that focusing on that aspect loses sight of the actual war that Milosevic
fought (and not the template war that NATO assumed he would fight). Milosevic's
real war was the ethnic cleansing offensive against the Albanian civilian
population of Kosovo. Milosevic had two objectives. The first one was immediate,
to rob the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) of its medium of support. The second
objective was the campaign against NATO's center of gravity, its political
stability. Milosevic confronted the United States and its allies with the
grave risk of expanding instability throughout the "target" countries
of Albania and Macedonia, and extending into the entire Balkan region.
His instrument in this campaign was primarily paramilitary and police formations
which left little information signature. This made targeting armored vehicles
and artillery systems largely irrelevant to countering Milosevic's offensive.
Additionally, targeting the Yugoslav infrastructure offered only protracted
operations with significant economic damage to all of southern Europe,
whereas the refugee problem was immediate and catastrophic. Milosevic proved
he was a master at playing chess while his NATO counterparts played poker.[25]
This made General Clark and General Short's arguments over targeting at
best tangential to the war Milosevic was imposing on his opponent.

Asymmetric Offsets to Information Superiority

Admiral James Ellis, Commander-in-Chief of NATO's Allied Forces Southern
Europe, noted in an interview on Kosovo in early September 1999 that too
much information has the potential to reduce a military leader's awareness
of an unfolding situation. Too much data leads to sensory overload: "Information
saturation is additive to the `fog of war' . . . uncontrolled, it will
control you and your staffs and lengthen your decision-cycle times."[26]
Admiral Ellis extended this problem to video teleconferencing as well,
since it can become "a voracious consumer of leadership and key staff
working hours."[27] This is probably the most interesting and underrated
lesson learned of the entire war, that information superiority overload
can actually hurt mission performance. Whether this fact influenced the
tank count is unknown. Secretary Cohen also mentioned this problem in his
speech in California. The point to make is that perhaps this flood of information
in its own way manipulated the human interpreter's evaluation of the situation
on the ground. Technical systems provided "proof" that a tank
had been destroyed, when in fact the target hit wasn't a tank.

Admiral Ellis also recounted some of the asymmetric Serbian responses
during the conflict, sighting the following: sporadic use of air defense
assets; deceptive media campaigns; deliberately increasing the risk to
NATO pilots of collateral damage; and developing political cleavages between
NATO allies. To prevent its air defense assets from being neutralized,
the Serbian armed forces turned their assets on only as needed. They therefore
presented a "constant but dormant" threat. This resulted in NATO
using its most strained assets (e.g., JSTARS, AWACS) to conduct additional
searches for air defense assets and forced NATO aircraft to fly above 15,000
feet, making it difficult for them to hit their targets. Ellis noted that
NATO achieved little damage to the Serbian integrated air defense system.[28]

Admiral Ellis also spoke about not being able to counter Milosevic's
state-controlled media and his attempts to gain international sympathy.
As Milosevic's forces killed hundreds of people, NATO was always responding
to its collateral damage problem. This is another lesson that must be addressed,
how to prevent the press from becoming an asymmetric asset for the enemy.

Regarding the media, the US military's airborne psychological warfare
machine, "Commando Solo," was unable to affect the Serb state
media. Its use was hampered by the unknown air defense threat in the area.
NATO officials were unwilling to risk flying the plane over Belgrade in
fear that Milosevic would trade an air defense site in exchange for shooting
down the slow-moving platform. As a result, Commando Solo flew far away
from the Serb capital and was unable to affect TV coverage. One report
during the bombing campaign asserted that NATO had proposed a moratorium
on the bombing if Milosevic would just give NATO three hours of air time
on TV and radio each evening. This indicates how unsuccessful the psychological
warfare plan had become. All the while Milosevic maintained information
superiority over his own people.

The expectation that the air campaign would last only a short time also
was a detriment to the NATO psychological operations effort, since those
assets were not included in the initial plans. It took two weeks to start
delivering products and some 30 days to develop a campaign plan. Serbia
started its psychological operations campaign days earlier and won the
early initiative. The Serbs were initially successful on two fronts. First,
they instituted the "target" campaign among their own people,
in which citizens adorned themselves with bulls-eye targets, as if daring
NATO to strike them personally. This idea greatly enhanced Serb morale
and resistance at the start of the conflict. Second, they used the Internet
to spread various campaign themes and claims, an effort the former US Information
Agency (USIA) worked hard to control. One USIA analyst believes the conflict
was the first Internet war, with both sides using the electronic medium
to fight one another in a war of words and logic. But the point to again
be made is that at the start of the conflict Serbia maintained information
superiority over the minds of its citizens.

Another asymmetric offset, one not noted by Admiral Ellis, was the ability
of Milosevic's air defense personnel to template US and NATO air operations
based on their performance during the Gulf War and in Bosnia. Knowing when
reconnaissance flights would be conducted, or when satellites would fly
overhead, the Serb military would preposition armored vehicles to be picked
up as targets. Then the Serbs would move the actual targets; in some instances
they put in the target's place an old tractor with a telephone pole attached
to make it look like a tank from 15,000 feet. At night it was difficult
to tell the difference. And, it must be remembered, NATO pilots still had
to contend with the possibility that air defense assets could be turned
on and fired at a moment's notice, reducing their target focus.

In hindsight, NATO did not handle the political side of information
superiority well either. The alliance had the combined assets and knowledge
of its 19 nations to draw on in composing a psychological and negotiating
profile of President Milosevic. From this background, political analysts
around the world should have been able to draw a reliable profile of Milosevic's
intentions, goals, and desires. In addition, NATO had the negotiating edge
at Rambouillet. Some believe, however, that a mistake was made in the form
of an ultimatum to Milosevic that ended the talks. Many diplomats apparently
expected the ultimatum to result in a quick capitulation or a Milosevic
retreat.[29] That did not happen. Instead, look at the results: at Rambouillet
One, Albanian moderates signed the agreement; at Rambouillet Two, the KLA
signed in the expectation that elections for Kosovo would be held in three
years, and that NATO transit in Serbia would be allowed; and at the final
moment when the Belgrade Agreement was signed, neither of those two conditions
survived.

One hopes that State Department analysts are studying in depth these
negotiating shortcomings and the inability to persuade Milosevic, just
as the military should be studying the shortcomings in its information
superiority approach. For example, did diplomats and military representatives
alike make the wrong assessment of the projected length of this conflict
based on Milosevic's behavior following NATO's air campaign in August 1995?
The 1995 concessions were likely the result of the combination of the air
campaign and the simultaneous ground force offensive that was under
way in Croatia, not just the bombing campaign alone. Did planners overlook
this? Undoubtedly, Milosevic was to some extent irrational, but we also
knew him well and should have been able to foresee his responses with some
degree of certainty based on previous conversations and actions.

Technological and Political Fixes

Of course attempts are being made to correct some of the technological
problems encountered during the conflict in Kosovo. NATO technical weaknesses
included an inability to identify moving targets and to find armored or
other equipment that was well camouflaged. The director of the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Frank Fernandez, is trying to
solve both of these problems. He noted, "You had to put a human eyeball
on [a] target before you could give the command to shoot because we don't
trust our identification systems."[30] Again, the human dimension
is stressed. Initial areas of intensified DARPA research include:

Improving a sensor's ability to identify targets and see through camouflage.
Reducing the size of space radars and their antennas to more accurately
sense moving targets.

Finding better methods to combine and pass target data through networks
to aircraft or weapons.

Developing techniques to find underground facilities and see what is
happening inside.

The efforts to identify moving targets are focused on multi-, hyper-,
and ultra-spectral (optical) sensors that take electromagnetic spectrum
slices to identify targets. Technologies to uncover camouflaged equipment
will take advantage of operational sequencing of various types of targets
to uncover them, as well as low-frequency radars and computer programs
designed to see through foliage. Finally, Fernandez noted that future attacks
will be based on a piloted vehicle operating in tandem with two or three
pilotless vehicles: "That's what we learned in Kosovo--to strike these
targets that are hidden took two people, one to fly and release the weapon
and another to look for and designate the targets."[32] Fernandez's
desire to have a human assist pilotless vehicles is important because it
indicates that DARPA may not fall prey to an American tradition--trying
to just find technological answers to problems.

It also will be interesting to watch the explanation of political lessons
learned over the next few months. For example, there should be a serious
effort at the State Department and in the National Security Council to
right some apparent wrongs in our decisionmaking process. Wouldn't it be
wise to study why we failed to develop a campaign plan beyond the first
five days? And shouldn't we study why we put our operational art in the
hands of politicians who tried to dictate the pace, scope, and rules of
engagement, and perhaps even the target selection process? Wouldn't it
be advantageous to find new ways to persuade the Milosevics of the world
to negotiate, allowing NATO and the United States to withhold the use of
their war machine in the first place and thus not having to deal with the
technological problem sets of such a conflict? Wouldn't this be better
than simply developing new technological solutions?

Conclusion

Why is information superiority a dangerous myth? Primarily because we
don't interpret what we collect as well as we might. It is not that we
are doing poorly, just that we aren't doing as well as we think we are.
Consider, for example, the shortcomings sighted above of NATO's use of
total information superiority:

. Total information superiority did not allow us
to achieve a political or diplomatic victory. Like Saddam Hussein, Milosevic
is still in power, and the Belgrade Agreement was a far cry from what was
sought at Rambouillet.

. Total information superiority did not enable
NATO to locate the Serbian armed forces' center of gravity, the police
and paramilitaries doing the killing.

. Total information superiority did not counter
rumor nor prejudiced reporting. For example, to cite an instance not covered
in this analysis, information superiority did not allow NATO to know, even
approximately, how many Kosovo civilians were killed before the bombing
started. Instead of 100,000 Kosovo victims, as rumors suggested, 10,000
now appears to be closer to the truth. Would NATO have gone to war over
10,000 people? To date, only some 2,500 bodies have been discovered.

. Total information superiority was affected by
politicians, who demanded that pilots fly above a certain height to minimize
casualties, thereby degrading the effectiveness of information systems.

. Total information superiority was manipulated,
if the debate over the total number of tanks destroyed is any indicator,
by asymmetric offsets (e.g., fake tanks, other decoys) and by a study of
NATO air operation templates.

. Total information superiority did not result
in NATO communications working without serious problems, even after years
of practice and in the face of no radio-electronic counterattacks.

During the air campaign over Yugoslavia and Kosovo, NATO had information
superiority. But as the discussion above demonstrates, if analysis is inadequate,
then information superiority is not enough. One danger in information superiority,
then, is in assuming knowledge. Another danger, as the 99.6 percent figure
demonstrates, is in overestimating our abilities.

If applied against the major criteria of reducing uncertainty, providing
a more complete intelligence picture of the battlefield, and assisting
precision-guided missiles in acquiring and destroying targets, information
superiority passed many but failed some critical tests in Kosovo (as battle
damage assessment showed). We may possess information superiority, but
we often fail to exploit it because we can't always correctly interpret
what we gather. As a result we are unable to lower uncertainty.

Three problems deserve to be highlighted. First, the methodologies we
are using to evaluate data appear to have minor shortcomings which sometimes
result in horrific mistakes that directly affect our credibility at higher
levels. That is, incorrect assessments by low-level data interpreters eventually
diminish the credibility of those officials who have to stand before the
public and explain the facts and figures. Sometimes this is a result of
consumers who press too hard for answers. But had NATO ground troops been
inserted into Kosovo before the Finnish-Russian negotiations ended the
conflict, two more reinforced mechanized infantry battalions were awaiting
them than expected. This miscalculation was due to the inability of information
technology systems and analysts to properly assess and interpret what their
"total information superiority picture" of the battlefield really
showed (and there were cockpit recordings to study). If open-source reports
are correct, we destroyed mockups and decoys in many cases, not working
armored vehicles. The cost-effectiveness of air power was greatly diminished
as a result. Clearly, more emphasis needs to be placed on the art of battlefield
visualization.[33]

Second, we are not realistically assessing the conditions under which
our military capabilities are being employed. What was "combat"
directed against in Kosovo? Stationary objects, such as buildings, civilian
infrastructure, press and police headquarters, and military garrisons;
and mobile targets that moved mainly at night if at all, such as tanks,
armored personnel carriers, and artillery units. It was not face-to-face
combat, but combat conducted from afar. Perhaps "engagement"
would have been a better choice of words than combat, although no pilot
would agree! We can do better in realistically assessing and describing
the conditions under which our forces are engaged.

Third, the US military must rid itself of a degree of self-deception
that occasionally appears. The US and NATO forces are good and they know
it. But they must do better in their estimates of success, for manipulated
figures could lead to unrealizable goals or expectations. This attitude
can lead military planners to draw false conclusions about Kosovo, previous
conflicts, and consequently future operations. A sober assessment of what
went wrong is just as important as seeing what went right. No better example
could be offered than the expectation of a repeat of the August 1995 "quick
concession" from Milosevic, which left planners unprepared beyond
the first few days of the conflict in 1999. Our air power is magnificent,
but we are becoming its captive because of exaggerations such as those
enumerated in this article. Let air power's success speak for itself; even
without exaggeration it is without peer.

Drawing the wrong conclusions, as was pointed out with battle damage
assessments, can have dramatic and lethal effects on any intervening force.
There is a lesson in this, namely that the human in the link still plays
a very important role even in the age of information operations, perhaps
a more important one than we recognize. Automated warfare is still a long
way off if the problems that developed in the nearly opponentless skies
over Kosovo are any indicator. US analysts must hone their methodologies
to quickly and correctly interpret the cascading amounts of information
that confront them in a conflict situation. They must consider asymmetries
in information-age conflict. Improvements in the art of battlefield visualization
or conceptualization, including the vital element of interpretation, must
be made. The human interpreter of information is every bit as important
as the human user of information.

Future conflicts may be very different from NATO's experience in Kosovo.
Future enemies could possess some or all of the following: an adept air
force; up-to-date air defense sites; precision-guided cruise missiles that
can do to our air bases and planes from standoff positions what we can
do to theirs (to include destroying AWACS); and the ability to reach the
United States with weapons of mass destruction, precision missiles, or
terrorist acts. When these threats confront US and NATO systems, what will
information superiority do for us? Will it be even more unreliable when
stressed by both nontechnical offsets and technological counters? How reliable
will those new estimates be? What will happen when a real information warfare
system confronts ours? Will our capabilities be degraded by a quarter,
a third, or more?

The Pentagon's top civilian leaders evidently plan to produce an official
report on Kosovo, breaking their study into three parts: a deployment-employment
group, an intelligence support for operations group, and an alliance and
coalition warfare group. It is important that the intelligence support
group study the current information superiority dogma to correct some of
the faulty data and impressions being generated by both analysts and leaders
from the Kosovo conflict. We have to stop ourselves before heading down
the wrong "yellow brick road," and instead inculcate the wisdom
that people like Admiral Ellis are revealing. NATO and the United States
did almost everything right in Kosovo. Now it is time to assess the little
that was done wrong. As the Chinese might say, you can lose in contemporary
war in two ways: if you fail to defend your information superiority, or
if you become trapped by false information. It is the latter to which we
should now pay attention.

NOTES

1. US Joint Chiefs of Staff, "Information Operations," March
1999, p. 1. Information superiority is based on dominance in three areas:
intelligence (with surveillance and reconnaissance support), C4 (command,
control, communications, and computers), and information operations.

2. Ibid., p. 6.

3. "Joint Statement on the Kosovo After Action Review," presented
by Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and General Henry H. Shelton,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, before the Senate Armed Services
Committee, 14 October 1999. Downloaded from the Internet, DefenseLINK news,
http://www.defenselink.mil:80/news/Oct1999/b10141999_bt478-99.html.

33. The subject of battlefield visualization is addressed in the pamphlet
"Information Operations" produced by the US Army Information
Operations Division, 1999, p. 11.

Lieutenant Colonel Timothy L. Thomas (USA Ret.) is an analyst at the
Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, Kans. He has written
extensively on information operations and on current Russian military-political
issues. During his military career he served in the 82d Airborne Division
and was the Department Head of Soviet Military-Political Affairs at the
US Army's Russian Institute in Garmisch, Germany. As with all Parameters
articles, opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the Department of the Army or any other government
agency.